oh i'm sorry washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. there are a lot of ballot initiatives from coast to coast this election season including many that are trying to help the our darks avoid pain state taxes since when did funding the government become such a no no also the workers this inside of technologies in freeport illinois i really don't want to lose their job and they're willing to get arrested to show it what happened in freeport yesterday and is there any way to save these jobs before mitt

romney's bain capital ships them off to china also later in the show we'll have a your take my take a live segment your chance to call in live in ask a question or make a comment on air to say he's doing to find out when to call in for your chance to be on the big picture. you need to know this besides trying to elect one of their own mitt romney to the white house the allegoric seven other trick up their sleeve this election and that's to make sure that their state taxes never go up their plan is carried out in the form of ballot measures often under the names of things like the taxpayer bill of rights laws it will appear at a handful of states on election day and are aimed at making it very difficult to raise taxes or eliminate loopholes used by rich people and corporations such measures are on the ballot in states like florida michigan and we're in washington

state this year so imagine just for a second a law or even more bizarre an amendment to a state's constitution that just came right out and said in plain english quote you may not take away any tax breaks the billionaires or a large corporations have without it getting at least a two thirds vote in the legislature but you may lay off teachers state troopers repeal meals on wheels programs and cut off financial aid to colleges and college students with a simple majority vote. and then imagine of the wall when a step further and said you can't raise taxes on billionaires or corporations and you can't close any of the tax loopholes they use every day but you can easily raise fees on everyday working people so they're paying more to register their cars or to park on city streets or have their garbage collected sounds crazy right but that's exactly what california passed two years ago and has already happened in states from oregon to colorado to delaware and may soon happen this election day in

florida michigan michigan and wisconsin and while people voting for these measures are constitutional amendments nearly always passed as ballot measures with highly deceptive advertising. excuse me think they're voting to keep their own taxes low the real effect is to keep intact tax breaks and loopholes for the rich and corporations while simultaneously wiping out the ability of the state to deal with an economic downturn basically billionaires are protected but unemployed people are screwed because when there's an economic downturn the state can't spend any more money to help unemployed people get over the hump because to do so would mean the state would have to even temporarily close the tax loopholes that are used by the corporations and the super rich or raise the taxes remember every state in a union except for mine constitutionally requires a balanced budget and the only way to balance a budget when you increase spending like when unemployment goes up is either to close tax loopholes on the rich or on corporations and given that the republican party has become wholly the party of billionaires and big corporations are never

going to go along with democrats in closing even one dollar in tax loopholes for billionaires. consider this chart from the center on budget and policy priorities based on u.s. department of labor data that shows how when a state is from raising taxes or cutting loopholes for the rich and corporations to help out on employ people that state can no longer respond to an economic downturn and therefore the downturn becomes an unemployment spiral what's happening here is billionaires and transnational corporations are sucking our states dry the welfare they collect in the form of special tax breaks and outright payments they get from the states is more than twice all the money spent on welfare for people who are humans and they want to keep it that way which is why they push so hard for these so-called taxpayer bill of rights laws to be in place to protect billionaire and corporate special interest tax payers if this was really just about taxes these laws would be totally unnecessary check out this graph of the past thirty years of

money collected in the states comparing states with and states with out these laws is virtually no difference in the total money fund in the state so what's the difference well it's pretty straightforward in those states that protect giant tax loopholes for corporations and the rich with these laws what goes up to compensate for those lowered taxes on the rich and the corporations are fees that are raised that are paid by average working people for example when mitt romney was governor of massachusetts in order to avoid cutting his own capital gains tax loophole that lets him as a bank or pay less than half the tax rate of doctors and lawyers in his own state. romney proposed a series of fees this would this was compiled by ender because it's good buzz feed that. for example a fee on the blind yes you heard that right he proposed a fee that only blind people would have to pay one hundred dollars fee on the mentally handicapped a four hundred dollars fee on anybody who had become sick with tuberculosis one

hundred dollars by annual fee i am teasin first responders if you want to flash red lights to get through traffic you have to pay up a listed and pass romney did successfully double the fees for both the a.m.t. certification and the figured out the pay if your ambulance was equipped with basic life support equipment increased hourly groups skating fees and ice rinks across the state and he was behind a fee on working class barbers and air dressers increasing how much it cost to get a haircut license. romney also increased the licensing fees for nurses plumbers home inspectors funeral directors and auto mechanics he doubled the fee if you want to legally change your name like hey you got married it's all about increasing fees on working people to protect tax loopholes for rich people like mitt romney for a state with a supermajority requirement seeking to balance its budget it is legislatively easier to repeal a meals on wheels program to lay off state troopers or kindergarten teachers cut

health care services for seniors or cut college aid to young people in school then a close a corporate tax loophole that's the other scam being run this election and i just figured you should know by now to offer his take on this david conservative commentator and pro-business advocate david welcome. they thanks for having me tom as always it's a pleasure thanks for joining us david why do you hate blind people. i don't hate blind people but you're very raw you want to donate all our money people yeah i know that seems kind of outrageous you know what i've always thought would be a great way to raise revenue though tom and you know i am against increasing taxes i always felt we should put a tax stamp on any legal filings so if you have an individual who buys a you know wants to sue somebody for a slip and fall or something and he summons and complaint you have to buy a tax stamp one for the state one for the fed cola one hundred bucks or if you want

to file a will you have to buy a tax stamp and i would imagine because we're so litigious we'd be able to balance our budgets in short order that's actually a very interesting idea david given that more than sixty percent of all of the activity in our in our court system in our federal courts in our state courts and it's and it's actually much higher than some states is entirely corporate activity if every time one of these corporations wanted to use our commons of our courts which you and i pay for with our tax dollars the corporations by and large don't if every single time that they wanted to file something like that they had to pay yeah it's a good idea why should everybody pay it let's have people have skin in the game we want you on humous you want people to pay it if they're going to. so so if you're going to well actually. i don't know if you if you file for divorce or something like there are aren't there court costs associated with things like that yeah but they are not really going into our local state and federal coffers they're being

subsumed just for the administration and the whole bit right now we're facing such as you wonder on camera magellan offices them and all eyes and there's room for ok well you know i don't if you're going to apply it to a bunch of corporate activity i don't disagree why should it be easier though you know in a state level why should we say that it takes a two thirds majority to do away with a loophole for a billionaire but if you want to if you want to cut funding if you want to cut unemployment payments to average working people you can do that with a simple majority. right i understand what you're saying but if you look at the totality of facts a lot of states have taken positions for sometimes the best of purposes and the consequences of their actions have been very onerous on the residents of the states for instance right here in new york most people are really suffering with their day to day tax burden and i would like to take one of those people in action as well

right now tom and this will be important to a lot of the people who have jobs in your viewing audience right now we're all enjoying the so-called social security tax holiday but the fact of the matter is come january first we're getting a two percent increase now what does that mean right now we pay two percent less on the first one hundred ten thousand one hundred dollars and it's been that way with her for like a year to have yet right and the fact of the matter is it's going to be over two thousand dollars for your working audience these are not millionaires or billionaires of additional taxes they'll pay and those who are married then that will be double so that'll be over four thousand dollars now those are just low rent chumps who are barely scraping by the people we profess to care about so much and this is just a david let's let's make their brain a little more accurate that people were paying what is a six percent five point eight something like that they were paying that and and

obama got that drop by two points for a year and a half to help stimulate the economy the democrats are talking about again it anyway and for another year or two they are talking about action as if they want to take it away and it's just not right you know it's not right to saddle our young rankly i don't think we should have done in the first place david i think that what we should have said is if you make more than one hundred ten thousand dollars you still have to pay social security taxes why should donald trump in your city why should drawn trump be sitting around raking in millions and millions of dollars and pain nothing in social security taxes not one penny after his first. hundred thousand dollars in income and people working people people making ten thousand twenty thousand thirty forty thousand dollars a year are having to pay six percent or now it's four to have four and change one hundred percent of their income exact always that is there the obama administration doing that to these people want to rock obama when he was in canada in two thousand and eight said let's make everybody pay i think that's a great suggestion but you know when did since when did the basic practice of

funding the government taxes you know oliver wendell holmes taxes are the price of admission to civil society when did this whether they become evil. well tom the taxes in and of themselves are not evil what has gotten is to use your phrase evil is this out of control spending by spendthrift politicians who just keep sticking it to the outside of military spending right now and tell you that as a historic low we're spending we're spending less than we were in the one nine hundred fifty s. outside of military spending you know i'm pretty sure even the most myopic of your audience member can see for themselves their dollar isn't going nearly as far when they get that paycheck and they see those withholdings all the thirty years the reaganomics have great it doesn't accord with what i decided the thirty years of reaganomics has devastated the middle class david seeley thanks for joining us tonight a thanks a lot tom a i'm still wanting you to have me on that conversation with great minds

. after the break there romney says he wants to keep jobs in america but at this mall and hundreds of jobs are being outsourced by his company bain capital what's the latest on the harvesting of sin sada technology. you know we both agree we agree we have to bring the tax rates down and i feel the same as the president did governor romney i'm glad. you agree let's get back to something the president i agree on and then to view it over to have a choice perhaps this is what you wonder who to vote for when romney and obama agree on so many things never you do have other options come november sixth tune in to see the second round of debates between the major third party candidates on october thirtieth.

i will write. that i also promised that i'd buy every single day. you. feel like. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something

else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything. you don't know i'm tom harvey welcome to the big picture. in screwed news despite getting zero mentions in any of the presidential debates the fight between workers and bain capital is heating up bain capital is shutting down this inside a factory in freeport illinois and of ember fifth the day before the election and sending one hundred and seventy american jobs off to china but the workers who will lose their jobs are not going down without a fight workers have been holding rallies outside the factory for weeks prompting bain capital on tuesday to issue a threat that protests continue than bain would have immediately shut down the

plant in response on wednesday workers filed unfair labor practices charges against in sabah and then attempted to march to the facility to demand a meeting with the plant manager the reverend. jackson joined with the workers in the march but he had thirteen others were arrested outside the plant workers have been pleading with mitt romney to use his influence to prevent the closing of the factory or romney hasn't said a word although according to his two thousand and eleven tax returns he still owns stock in the company and stands to profit from those outsourcing of these sensitive jobs joining me now by phone for the latest out of freeport illinois and what's inside the means for the rest of us is joanne penicillin and saddam floyd and one of those who was arrested yesterday joanne welcome thank you. please describe what happened yesterday that led to your arrest. was i had been in a meeting when he proposed and he relayed information that. i had came to

freeport illinois and that there weren't any more protests on the property and the route that it would i mean at least not to the factory oh i i filed. that labor practice. and we went in march over there you are the man the meeting of the plant manager and we were all are while i understand you're a single mom with two kids this this this is a decent job you've had it for a number of years it's a good american manufacturing job that bain capital mitt romney's company wants to move offshore and it's going to happen just weeks before christmas and the holidays are between before thanksgiving in the and then you know a month or so before the christmas holidays how does it make you feel. wow i mean i can make me mad it makes me angry you know i don't know what i'm going to do for a job there's not a lot of. decent pay and. you know like i just.

i don't know what i meant you know that's got to be a horrible situation that the bain capital has put you in here's an ad about mitt romney and since that's airing in wisconsin ohio and pennsylvania take a listen to those. he is being created made a fortune from it even today remains and students can break them saying the shipping jobs to china and forcing workers to train the chinese replacements the week before they came in they took the american flag down that flew inside the plane and in the week after they left the court about what were supposed to be were americans sourcing jobs taking down the flight to want to build robots to hide from the truth. did it trouble you joanne that since saddam didn't get mentioned in any of the debates despite all the talk of jobs being outsourced to china and yet it did a little bit i went early hoping i'm the last. that it would have and i thought

it was well you have you in the other workers there have appealed directly to mitt romney asking him to to do something with the company that he created in that he still owns a lot of stock in and that he will profit from you know sending these these these good jobs offshore what is the romney response been to. the romney camp remark on it in that. mitt romney hasn't had anything to do with being capital ten thousand nine hundred ninety nine and that we should. attention i'm back obama the president of united because he currently has. eight and seven but he had one he was good and i think somebody thought it was like eleven dollars stock and you know my understanding actually i could be wrong on this but my understanding is that it was a retirement fund or a pension fund that he had when he was a teaching when he was

a law professor and everything and that that is administered by a by a pension administrator with a college and yeah he's that that's rather pathetic bain is threatening to close this plant down early isn't that an empty threat since they're already close in the plan less than two weeks or are they just trying to like shot up the publicity because it might or romney right exactly you know like a they've already taken everything that they can take away for me at that point my job is it's going to china. i think they're just aired and they're trying to hush it up because it's making them look bad. i mean all and i'll be wired. you know we're not i don't think we're asking for a whole lot we want to wait a minute a living we want to wait for the only we want you know to be able to go and do things with their families and pay our bills and i don't think that's

a lot but am i absolutely agree with you joanna honest and i wish you the very best and thank you for coming you know the story. unfortunately president obama hasn't said a word about since either that's because both parties by and large have bought into these neo liberal free trade policies that are decimating american manufacturing i've said it before i'll say it again the first political party to stand up and defend american workers to use words like protectionism and tariffs to defend america's manufacturing base by cracking down on the so-called free trade and these outsourcing policies that party is going to start winning big at the polls in the meantime there might be a way for workers to fight back against these outsourcing corporate predators joining me now to explain is mike help labor journalist and staff writer at in these times mike welcome back good to be on the show again tom great to have you with us how do people fight back well i mean you know what's interesting here is everybody is going to you know governor romney but there are a few things that you know president obama the democratic governor of illinois in

the mirror frequently doing they're going to number of clients only about one half of those examples in u.s. history were towns actually stepped in and used eminent domain to keep a factory whoa there for the fifth amendment taking were the usually grab land and to build a school or bank or road but under the nose of the supreme court ruling. the city but i have seen from what i would have thought was towns where people would threaten decade have had campaigns where they've you know been able to you know because often when these plants closed they were sold to another person so they've had campaigns like that there was a fair. dilute minnesota in the late eighty's where you know the town stepped in and declared eminent domain factory stayed open for another five years closed after five years but a lot of folks got those got their pensions in five years and they were able to find other careers to move on to so this has been done it was done during world war two of a number of factories and the logic of a lot of towns that try this or experiment with it is that you know there's

a lot of public subsidies that go into these factories why should they just be able to take all those public subsidies they've been invested in the profitable business and take the equipment with them they want to move the business if they want to move their productions that's fine but be quick and that's what's happening here it's and said it is that they refuse and even sell to someone else they're going to take all the equipment and go elsewhere and scrap the rest of it or they don't want to bring another competitor into the market that's very interesting how this company since saddam which is owned by bain capital. when they they bought this factory from was it raytheon i think it was and then. and when i was talking with joanne on the radio show earlier today she works there at the time that this acquisition happened and they had no idea that bain was behind this they they were told you know these people came in and said hey we're now since out of technology's a nurse and solder whatever it is and we're going to move a factory in china they said that but nobody mention the word pain in the workers got together and they just started digging through corporate filings and things and discovered the bain was behind this is this kind of sneaking grab in the dark of

the night thing characteristic of these vulture capital funds where yeah if you bring capital private equity from five out of the ten largest employers in united states or private equity firms a time and time again. or your company is owned by privately from time and time again i'm going to leave you struggle to figure out that it's owned by a private equity firm so you know it gets to a question of who's really dictating policy and a lot of these factories closing which you know walk outs and other things and it may be that a lot of the policies being dictated by guys like this you know a lot of guys that. that's a pretty. remarkable what eminent domain that's that's a brilliant suggestion it's probably late now because most of the equipment already sure it's going to do two there's a lot of legal challenges that can be found i was up in taunton massachusetts where the last january two thousand and eleven where the town up there was trying to save extra line corporations we talked about about a year and a half ago and you know they were unable to get all their ducks in line in time so

it's a tough strategy but you know we've known this factories closing for a while and even if the eminent domain doesn't work you know when they threatened it up in tottenham certainly got a much bigger severance and they would have gone before in in i was in argentina in two thousand two thousand and one right around that time when the economy had collapsed when they said screw the i.m.f. and just you know we're going to go our own way and workers were taking over factories workers were just showing up and in some cases they and ultimately the government actually became supportive of the miners anyway buy in the factories from the employers who were basically there going bankrupt or leaving the country or just saying screw this we're not going to do it should we or is there any movement in the united states to move toward a law that would allow for example the workers this is saddam to say to beno you want to take the factory overseas we have a right sort of like the you know the wagner actually we have the right to unionize instead we have the right to buy that from you and we can do an l.b.o. we'll get the debt somehow and and we'll run our own factory turn into

a worker on to co-op here in d.c. but if there's an apartment building that's sold the people that live in the apartment building have the right to have a first bid on it so there's a precedent for there's a you know there's certainly a precedent and you know i think a combination of local and state laws could do that but this thing about something else that we don't need to pass big grand statures what about the next time you know one of these companies like some sada comes around to a local mayor or a county government or state government says oh we want to five million dollars subsidy for drainage and roads maybe they should come back and say well we want this pledge that if you ever move we have it on it. yeah or war and then you seen that in some towns you know a. good job you know they've done this strategy of clawback which is that they've they've started getting local governments to put in provisions like that because it really you know if you think of all the public subsidies that go into place likes and so you know i haven't studied it closely but if i've looked at many other factories where there's sort of everybody they get it you get abatements they get they get they get tax breaks to get all kinds of stuff michael thanks so much for

to be on the show it's great to have you with us keep up the great reporting. as you learn how much you're worth just in sicily and australia and filmmaker wanted to do a documentary on losing your virginity so naturally as part of a documentary your range of virginity auction where will individuals could sell their virginity to the highest bidder both a man and a woman put themselves up for auction catarina make believe in our niggly or any twenty year old brazilian woman auction her virginity often end up making a whopping seven hundred eighty thousand dollars anonymous japanese man won the right to take her virginity meanwhile the auction for the man didn't go as well her male counterpart alex stepanov only got three thousand dollars for his virginity from their anonymous brazilian woman persistence and seem fair considering mr

stepping off much more pressure to perform maybe it's time for someone to introduce the losing your virginity option a equity act. coming up the phone lines are now open for our your take my take live segment so if you want to chance to ask me a question live on the big picture give us a call right now at two zero two nine zero four twenty one thirty four maybe i'll be talking to you after the break. governor romney and i we both agree we agree we had to bring the tax rates down i felt the same as the president did governor romney i'm glad. you agree but let's come back to something the president i agree on and there to you agree that the voters have a choice perhaps when you wonder who to vote for what romney and obama agree on so many things never you do have other options come november sixth tuned in to see the

second round of debates between the major third party candidates over thirty. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so sleep you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.